


My Little Love - The Christmas Episode

by ladymelodrama



Series: My Little Love [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aunt Maege's cookies, CHRISTMAS CHAOS, Childhood Sweethearts, Christmas at the Mormonts, Cozy Cabin, F/M, Fluff, Tormund the Dog, balsam fir, cinnamon, gingerbread, holiday records
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27896050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymelodrama/pseuds/ladymelodrama
Summary: Modern bb!Jorleesi/Childhood Sweethearts. Christmas at the Mormont cabin <3
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Series: My Little Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042809
Comments: 38
Kudos: 34
Collections: Winter Jorleesi 2020





	My Little Love - The Christmas Episode

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! <3 My second offering for Winter Jorleesi 2020 is this standalone fic set in the "My Little Love" universe. It honestly works with the current timeline of that story but I wanted it on its own just because if it were a television show, this would be the Christmas special ;) Hope you enjoy! Xo

“Who wants to help me decorate cookies?” Maege asks, inevitably. 

She’s made enough for an army. It’s only a few days before Christmas and the entire cabin smells like cinnamon, cloves and gingerbread. 

Not that anyone’s complaining.

“I’m willing to help you _eat_ them, if that helps?” Dacey offers coyly from the corner nook, beside a window whose outside panes are painted with frost. She’s flipping through a stack of glossy catalogs, legs curled up beneath her on the bench, fingers peeking out from the long sleeves of her chunky sweater. 

In reply, she gets an apron tossed at her head by her mother, which she barely sees coming, failing to lift her gaze from her catalogs before it’s too late. “Ow.”

“Clever, Dace,” Maege answers flatly. “And sorry, but you’re not eating these. I promised Catelyn Stark I’d give her six dozen for her charity bake sale.”

“Six dozen?” Dacey pushes her magazine aside and swings her legs around to plant both of her feet on the kitchen floor, for dramatic effect. “I mean, _Mom_. This is mercenary. Cat Stark is nice and all, I agree, but remember when she arranged that benefit for her sister’s cancer scare?”

“The one she co-hosted with Petyr Baelish?”

“Yeah, that one. And then it turned out that Lysa was lying about the whole thing? Fake test results and everything, all to hide the fact that she was just plain bankrupt,” Dacey shakes her head, with exaggerated ruefulness. “Think about all those poor pink cupcakes that felt totally betrayed by being sold off for the benefit of a lying, desperate housewife.”

“Just help me, would you?” Maege tries not to smirk at her eldest daughter’s antics. Dacey has strong opinions and she’s too smart for her own good. But Maege has no one to blame but herself. She raised her this way. She doesn’t beg, but she comes close, “Lyra and Alysane won’t be back for a couple hours so I need you.”

“Fine,” Dacey relents, without further argument. She holds up one hand, with the other clutching that apron close to her heart. “But I make no promises regarding final tallies. Sometimes cookies just disappear and there’s no rational explanation.” 

She shrugs and smirks, but makes sure to tie on that apron. 

“I’ll help you, Mama,” Jorelle is already tying on her apron as well, its cotton fabric adorned with summer wildflowers, all bright colors and a cascade of pretty petals. 

“Thanks, baby,” Maege answers, as she bends to plant a kiss on top of Jory’s curly-haired head.

Jorelle heard her mother’s request from an adjoining room and had wandered into the kitchen with both Daenerys and Jorah following close behind, as the three younger kids had been putting together a jigsaw puzzle most of the morning and only just finished.

School’s out for two weeks and Daenerys has been staying at the Mormonts’ cabin for over a month now, while court proceedings slowly meander along, regarding more permanent housing arrangements for the youngest Targaryen. 

Again, no one’s complaining. Least of all Daenerys. 

“I’ll help too,” Daenerys adds, without hesitation. 

She’s never decorated Christmas cookies before. She’s never really _had_ a Christmas before. No tree, no music, no baking, no presents. Illyrio Mopatis and his wife had never been big on holidays, saying it wasn’t worth the extra expense. For many years, Viserys told her that Santa Claus skipped their house because she was on the naughty list for good, having killed their mother when she was born.

She knows that’s not true. Having spent so much time with the Mormonts in the last year and a half, she knows a lot of things that her brother told her are outright lies. But she still feels a little stupid that she believed him for so long.

And she’s a little glum now, despite the cabin’s warmth and the delicious array of smells wafting around Maege’s kitchen—sugar, vanilla and spice. She fidgets on her wool sock feet nervously, watching Dacey and Jorelle help each other tie on those aprons. She mutters, in a little voice, “I don’t have an apron though.” 

“I’m going with Dad to get the tree so you can use mine,” Jorah’s suddenly behind her, reaching up and taking another apron down from a peg lining the kitchen wall. This one is a dark green plaid with a little scene embroidered on the front pocket. 

Jorah’s only ten but he’s tall enough already that he can skip the chair that Jorelle used to retrieve hers. Daenerys likes how he towers over her. Decades will come and go, and this will never change. He drapes the apron around Daenerys’s neck, waiting for her to gather up her hair, before helping her do up the neck ties and then the ones around her little waist.

Daenerys grins as she smooths down the fabric. It’s a couple sizes too big but she doesn’t mind. She finds a scene of three little black bears sewn onto the front of the apron, all tussling and wrestling together at a winding stream, amongst a grove of tall conifers dusted with snow.

“Thanks, Jorah,” she says, sincerely. 

In just a few years, she’ll make a habit of borrowing his clothes, to the point where he’ll give a little sigh whenever he finds her rifling through his closet and stealing another one of his sweaters, pulling it over her head with that same dimpled grin she wore as a child. The faux dismay won’t trick her at all, as she’ll know better. He loves when she wears his clothes.

Besides, by then, it’ll be a trade between them. And a few of Daenerys’s sweet kisses for a sweater is a trade Jorah will _always_ be willing to make.

* * *

Maege gives Catelyn Stark her six dozen cookies. But by the end of two hours of decorating, they have two dozen gingerbread and another dozen sugar cookies to spare.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Dacey winks at her mother, while slowly and deliberately shoving an exquisitely-decorated, and more importantly, deliciously-baked, angel-shaped cookie past her lips and into her mouth in one go, while Maege watches. 

Dacey squeals and ducks as her mother snaps a dish towel in her direction.

Alysane and Lyra return from their last-minute Christmas shopping, dripping with armfuls of wrapping paper and shiny bows. Only a few minutes later, Jeor and Jorah pull in with Jeor’s pickup truck. A tall, bushy fir peeks out of the truck bed, soon to be given a spot of honor in the cozy interior of Chez Mormont. 

Both vehicles leave slushy tracks in the snow, as it’s been falling for a few hours now and there’s at least an inch coating the driveway. It collects on the white lawn and icy dock below, with big, fluffy flakes falling and melting into frosty water. 

Lyra and Alysane knock their boots off on the porch steps before coming into the house. Jeor follows his nieces in, using one hand to shake off the flakes of snow covering his toque. As he pulls off that hat, a few of the snowflakes fall into his gold-grey hair and beard, giving a glimpse of the not-so-distant future. 

When he’s an old man, Jeor will resemble Father Christmas enough that Jorah and Daenerys’s children are convinced their grandfather moonlights as Santa Claus. 

Always a teddy bear when it comes to his grandchildren, Jeor won’t deny it.

* * *

Later that afternoon, there’s a fire snapping merrily in the wood stove. 

The snow is still falling outside and black ice now covers the whole lake from the Mormont cabin all the way down to Casterly Rock, which juts out from Tywin Lannister’s waterfront holdings on the southwesterly side of the lake. The temperature drops and the forecast is cold, promising that the ice and snowfall will stay through the holiday, granting them a white Christmas. 

Holiday music croons out from the old record player in the den—Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Burl Ives and Brenda Lee. 

Dacey is spinning Jorelle around in an impromptu dance, both of them laughing gaily, with green, leafy garlands thrown around their necks as woodland scarves. A single poinsettia blossom is pinned in Jory’s hair, courtesy of her sister. Alysane is casually picking through multiple boxes of glass and homemade ornaments on the coffee table, sorting them, while Lyra is kneeling on the throw rug beside Daenerys, showing the younger girl how to make a huge, elaborate bow-tie out of scraps of scarlet-red ribbons. 

The baby, Lyanna, woke up from her nap a while ago. She’s watching them all from her playpen, pulling herself up and balancing against the railing for a better view. She reaches out one, stubby little hand to the fluffy family dog, as she watches Lyra help Daenerys slip the finished bow-tie around Tormund’s collar. 

The St. Bernard is restless but likes the attention, as always. He’s already wearing a Santa hat with a white puff ball on the end. His tongue is hanging out while they work on his collar, both girls stroking his chin every once in a while to keep him happy, adorning him with Christmas cheer in a way that makes the baby grin a toothless smile and go, “Tah!”

“He does look good, doesn’t he?” Lyra gives a small smile of her own, reminiscent of her mother’s usual half-smirk, satisfied with their handiwork. 

Daenerys is more animated in her delight and scrambles off her knees, hugging the dog once around his large neck and kissing his furry cheek, saying, “He’s the most handsome Christmas dog in the whole world.”

Across the room, Jeor’s on a step ladder, fiddling with a string of lights to drape around the balsam fir. He tried to escape to his office earlier but the girls wouldn’t let him go, as he’s the only one tall enough to reach the top of the tree. And the balsam fir is taller than last year’s, enough that even he’s coming up a bit short, stretching up to make that first pass around with the lights. Jorah’s standing just below his father, at the base of that step ladder, holding the other end of the lights so they don’t tangle. 

The boys look over at what Lyra and Daenerys have done to the dog and Jeor shakes his head as he scratches his beard, muttering a gruff, “Oh, dear.” But his eyes are twinkling with merriment, so they all know he loves it as much as the rest. 

Jorah approves, nodding Daenerys’s way with a beaming smile that Daenerys answers in kind.

“Remember these?” Aly suddenly pulls out two ornaments from the nearest box, holding them up for her sisters’ inspection. They are strange little creatures to find in a Christmas box. Dacey narrows her eyes and peers at them, while simultaneously twirling Jorelle with one hand, and in perfect time with the music.

_Have a holly, jolly Christmas…_

“Oh my god, I thought we trashed those two years ago,” she groans, looking at the grey octopi figurines that Aly’s holding, a pair of ugly twins, wearing long scarves and tiny mittens on each tentacle. Jorelle sticks her tongue out at the sight and Lyra makes a face like she ate a sour apple. Dacey continues, “And I swear Mom threw them into the lake a couple years before that.”

“What did I throw into the lake?” Maege’s voice drifts in from the kitchen, where she’s still cleaning up from the midday baking fest.

“These Kraken ornaments,” Aly answers her, wrinkling up her nose at them. The girls aren’t that particular about decorations and they aren’t so proud that they don’t indulge in some kitsch trimmings—there’s a dancing snowman on the bookshelf in the hall who wiggles his hips and sings when you walk by—but there’s universal hatred in this house of these two ornaments.

It's a distaste many years in the making and no one knows exactly what started it. But they don’t like them. And if they were sentient at all, the Kraken would likely feel the same way about the Mormonts. 

“I did. One of them anyway,” Maege confirms, as she walks into the den with a dishcloth in her hands, still wiping them dry, all red and puckered from an hour in a soapy dishpan. She thinks back, “But I think Tory found it in the weeds and brought it back to the house—you see the bite marks on the left one?—it reeked like it was a real fish but he loved it, so I let him keep it as a chew toy for a while. I must have just thrown it back in the box at the end of the season.” 

“Well, they can both live in the box. They’re certainly not making their way onto our tree,” Alysane throws the Kraken decorations back in with little regret. 

Lyanna starts bouncing on the toes of her fuzzy, footed pajamas as soon as she sees her mother. Maege throws her dishcloth over her shoulder, and walks over to the playpen to pick the baby up. She lifts her high above her head and nuzzles her fat baby cheeks, one and then the other. Daenerys watches Maege and thinks she’s the best mother that ever lived.

“Jackpot,” Aly says, bringing the attention back to the boxes of ornaments once more. She reaches down into a second box to pluck out a specific item that is near and dear to the family. 

A star.

A silver star—elegant, delicate and very beautiful. Made of cedar and silver. Hand-crafted and old, as it was not bought at any discount department store. It’s been in the Mormont family for many years and Jeor and Maege don’t really know its true origins as it dates back to before their parents’ time. The artist’s initials, A. D., are carved into the back side of the star’s base. 

Daenerys has never seen anything so pretty, she’s convinced. And her eyes widen at the decoration in Aly’s hands, watching it spin and gleam on the on a tinsel-like string, forcing herself not to ask if she can touch it.

Jorah notices Daenerys’s fascination and reaches over to pull on his father’s pants’ cuff just slightly, nodding his head towards the little orphan girl who has never had the chance to decorate a tree in her life. 

Jeor looks down and nods at his son, silently agreeing.

“Daenerys would you bring me that star that Aly’s got in her hands?” Jeor asks the little girl, with a gentle tone softening his normally gruff voice.

Daenerys thinks she must have misheard him. Sharply, she glances away from the ornament to look at Jorah and his father to make sure, but both of them confirm that she heard him correctly, just by the looks on their faces. She opens her mouth to say something but then stops. Instead, she takes the few steps to Alysane and retrieves the star, handling it with the utmost care. 

“Don’t worry,” Aly encourages her. “You can’t break it.”

“It’s true,” Maege mentions, with a huff of dry laughter. She bounces Lyanna on her hip to the music spinning off the record player, as she continues, “I think every last one of you has dropped it.”

But still, Daenerys won’t risk it. So, she uses both hands as she walks across the den floor and shoos Tormund away when he gets too close, “Not now, Tory.”

When she makes it to Jeor, he reaches down and, to Daenerys’s great surprise, he lifts her up, far, far up, as high as the top of the tree. Jorah’s father takes another step up that step ladder, but his arms are strong and Daenerys’s weight is nothing to him. 

“Put it right at the top, lass,” he tells her as he holds her up in the canopy of the fir. She keeps the star clutched to her chest until she’s in position and then carefully, oh-so-carefully, places the ornament at the tip top.

When Jeor pulls her back, the star remains. 

And when he places her on the floor again, safe and sound, standing right beside Jorah, Daenerys smiles deeply and curtsies in a cute, endearing manner, while they all give her a round of applause.


End file.
